Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Seven years for £1.4bn rogue trader

- A rogue trader who carried out the UK's largest ever fraud, losing £1.4 billion in bad deals which nearly brought down a major international bank, has been jailed for seven years.

At one point during his run of losses, former rising star City trader Kweku Adoboli, 32, stood to run up losses of 12 billion US dollars (£7.5 billion) for employer UBS.

City of London Police, which investigated his activities after he confessed his losses in an email to colleagues, said he was one of the most sophisticated fraudsters the force had come across.

Adoboli was accused of exceeding his multimillion-pound trading limits and failing to hedge trades, faking records to cover his tracks at the Swiss bank's London office.

He admitted the losses but claimed he was pressured by staff to take risks, culminating in bad deals which wiped £2.8 billion off the bank's share value when they were discovered.

The Ghanaian-born former public schoolboy was sentenced after a trial that lasted more than nine weeks at Southwark Crown Court in London. Adoboli wiped away tears as he sat in the dock during the sentencing.

The jury convicted him unanimously of one count of fraud linked to the £1.4 billion loss. He was found guilty of a second fraud charge by majority verdict but cleared of four remaining charges of false accounting after the jury deliberated for 16-and-a-half hours across five days.

Jailing him, trial judge Mr Justice Keith told Adoboli: "There is a strong streak of the gambler in you. You were arrogant to think the bank's rules for traders did not apply to you."

The judge added: "Whatever the verdict of the jury you would forever have been known as the man responsible for the largest trading loss in British banking history.

"Your fall from grace as a result of these convictions is spectacular. The fact is you are profoundly unselfconscious of your own failings."